Critical Review by The American Political Science Review

SOURCE: A review of The Theory of Social Revolutions, in The American Political Science Review, Vol. VIII, No. 1, February, 1914, pp. 131-32.

In the following excerpt, the reviewer finds Adams's methodology in The Theory of Social Revolutions flawed but intellectually stimulating.

This work [The Theory of Social Revolutions] while filled with errors and hasty generalizations, possesses the quality of stimulating thought. Mr. Adams' primary contention is one against judicial authority in political matters. He contends that "no court can, because of the nature of its being, effectively check a popular majority acting through a coördinate legislative assembly. . . . The only result of an attempt and failure is to bring courts of justice into odium or contempt, and in any event to make them objects of attack by a dominant social force in order to...